VEGETARIANISM

Straits Times Interview with George jacobs, 54,
The President of The Vegetarian Society of Singapore

GEORGE JACOBS, 54, IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE VEGETARIAN SOCIETY OF SINGAPORE. HE IS A TIRELESS ADVOCATE OF VEGETARIANISM, WHICH HE BELIEVES IS THE RIGHT TYPE OF DIET FOR A HEALTHY PLANET. SHEFALI SRINIVAS CATCHES UP WITH HIM TO FIND OUT THE ROOTS OF HIS PASSION.

Have you always been vegetarian or are you a convert?

I've been vegetarian for almost half my life. I started at age 28. A key push was a book titled Diet For A Small Planet. The book explains that eating meat is very inefficient because we have to feed lots of plant food to the other animals which we later eat. Plant-based diets are more efficient because we eat the plants directly. That means more food available for people without enough food. It also means that we don't have to cut down or burn down so much rainforest area to grow food.

How has going vegetarian impacted your health?

You might be surprised to hear that I'm not a vegetarian for health reasons or for religious reasons. I don't claim that being vegetarian is necessarily better for human health than a low-meat diet, but I do believe that being vegetarian is perfectly adequate for good health. And, of course, it's much, much better for the health of the animals which live short, horrible lives so we can eat meat.

What damage does eating meat do to health, in your opinion?

I'm currently reading The China Study, a book based on a joint research project of China's Ministry of Health, Oxford University and Cornell University, plus lots of other research. It links animal-based foods to most of our well-known health problems, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, osteoporosis and some cancers.

How do you unwind?

I hang out with my wife, Fong Cheng Hong - she's an economist, niece Minnie, and nephew Vinnie (who's bugging me right now while I'm trying to type this answer), work out, watch TV, read children's literature and follow professional basketball on the Internet.

What do you eat when you're being sinful?

My main problem isn't what I eat, it's that I eat too much of all the great vegetarian foods. My friends used to call me 'hollow leg' to explain where I put all the food I was eating.

What do you do when you're not advocating vegetarianism?

Everyone at Vegetarian Society (Singapore) is a volunteer; so, I go out to earn my daily salad. My doctorate is in education, and I teach at various institutions around the island, including the National Institute of Education.

Why is vegetarianism such a passionate cause for you?

I know that I'm wildly biased and that there are lots of other vital causes, but to me what's so great about promoting veg is that eating less or no meat creates a virtuous circle: good for our own health, good for the environment, good for the 800 million humans without enough to eat and good for the animals which, like us, are thinking, feeling beings. With every vegetarian meal, I'm making a small contribution to righting these imbalances. One of my favourite vegetarian stickers shows two people, one a caveman, the other a modern-looking guy, and the words say, 'It's the 21st century, why are you still eating meat?'

Pearl Barley

Pearl Barley Recipes

Pearl Barley Dessert

Simple ingredients,

Pearl Barley

Sweet Corn

Rock Sugar

Pandan Leaf

Method of cooking

Put a sweet corn to boil.

After the sweet corn is boiled. Take it out, and scrap out the corn by using the spoon.


Next, put in Pearl Barley into the Queen Wok to boil. Once the water with the barley is boiled, add in the corn. Boil till it is cooked. Add-in the pandan leaf and rock sugar.



Ready to Serve!

Cauliflower Soup Recipe

Vegetarian

Eat healthy vegetarian Cauliflower Soup. Cauliflower is indeed, a flower. Below is the recipe :

1 Medium-sized Cauliflower

1-1/2 pints of milk, 1 oz. of butter

2 oz. of fine wheatmeal, pepper and salt

to taste, a little

nutmeg

, and the

juice of a lemon

. Prepare the cauliflower by washing and breaking it into pieces, keeping the flowers whole, and boil in 1-1/2 pints of water, adding the

butter, nutmeg, and seasoning

. When the cauliflower is quite tender add the

milk

, boil it up, and thicken the soup with the wheatmeal, which should first be smoothed with a little cold water. Lastly, add the lemon juice, and serve the soup with sippets of toast.

Chinese Recipe - Vegetarian Shark Fin Soup

Benefits of Vegetarian Shark Fin Soup

Save the world, eating real shark fin resulted in many sharks being killed.

Vegetarian shark fin are healthy and a better diet because its ingredients are all vegetables.

It is easy and fast to cook, not like the real shark fin, which have to take take plenty of time to cook.

Ingredients

The main ingredient is the Shark Fin Melon, which is available in the supermaket.The rest of the items are:

1. vegetarian ham - from vegetarian retailer

2. red carrot and water chestnut - wash and shredder

3. needle mushrooms and normal mushrooms (boiled and cut)

4. chopped parsley

5. Spices - pepper, black vineger, vegetable msg a little, black soy saurce, salt a little.

Cooking

First, make the soup, put in appropriate amount of water into the Queen Wok. Add in the cut shark fin melon (one whole cut into 4 pieces), with mushrooms, put to boil with high fire and very low fire when it is boiled.

Next, take our the mushrooms and cut into pieces. The melon have to seperate the "shark fin"; the meat inside the melon. See picture:



The soup after boiling with the melon and mushrooms :



One everything is ready, the last step is to put in all the ingredients into the wok and put to boiled.

Add spices and spread the chopped parsley on top, and there you goes the coolspouse chinese recipe vegetarian shark fin soup.



The amount of ingredients is all depends on much you want and adjust accordinly.

Try it out and tell me how it is like.

Barley Soup

How to Make Barley Soup, the Vegetarian Way

Take two tablespoonfuls of pearl barley and wash it in several waters till the water ceases to be discoloured. Put this in a saucepan with about two quarts of water, two onions sliced up, a few potatoes sliced very thin, and about a saltspoonful of thyme. Let the whole boil gently for four or five hours, till the barley is quite soft and eatable. Thicken the soup very slightly with a little white roux, season it with pepper and salt. Before serving the soup, add a tablespoonful of chopped blanched parsley.

N.B.--When chopped parsley is added to any soup or sauce, such as parsley and butter, it is very important that the parsley be blanched. To blanch parsley means to throw it for a few seconds into boiling water. By this means a dull green becomes a bright green. The best method to blanch parsley is to place it in a strainer and dip the strainer for a few seconds in a saucepan of boiling water. By comparing the colour of the parsley that has been so treated with some that has not been blanched, cooks will at once see the importance of the operation so far as appearances are concerned.

12 Ways to Build Trust in Your Relationship

Trust is one of the building blocks of a healthy and stable relationship. Without it, a relationship crumbles under the weight of suspicion and disrespect. When you’ve had something happen in your relationship or the one prior to your current one, you already know how important it is that you built trust for your security. Here are some ways to add trust to your relationship.

Delicious Dessert With Aloe Vera

Aloe Vera Dessert

In World War II Aloe Vera is commonly used to protect the skin, where navy personnel have to be under the sun for long period of time. Aloe vera also used as an ingredient in various cosmetic products. It is known for it medication value to different part of the world.

My wife like to make delicious dessert using Aloe Vera. My whole family like it very much.

I’ll share this recipe with you all. I’m a not a good cook, but my wife is a chefs. I copy how she cooked and would like to share it here.

Aloe vera is the main ingredient,which be found in wet market or supermarkt. Choose one that is fat and clean look. First get its fresh-cuts. Next, peel off its skins with a knife.Then, you may further cut them into small cubes.

Get ready with clean water, and boil it up with pandan leaf. The more pandan leaf you have,the nicer taste you’ll get. When the strong aroma of pandan leafs fill your kitchen, that’s about time you can take away the leafs.



Then, add the rock sugars into the boiling water. The quantity is varying, depending on how sweet you want your dessert to be. Every people have different demand.

Now, put the Aloe Vera gels that you’ve prepared earlier into the boil water.


Voola ! you have just prepared a Aloe Vera dessert, ready for serving.

Six Strategies for Bringing Courtship Back

1. Make a date. Many people complain that what passes for or "dating" these days consists of little more than meeting up at a bar or a coffeeshop, or simply hanging out at one of the other's respective home. And while there's nothing implicitly wrong with doing either one of these things, it's important to find time and places in which you can at once be alone and have the chance to get to know each other in relaxed, entertaining and maybe even romantic environment. It's hard to have a good conversation in a bar, harder still when that bar is full of mutual friends. Likewise, just going to someone's house early can have the unusual effect of both introducing misleading expectations with regards to physical intimacy and/or compromising the romance. I know full well that in 2006, ordering a pizza and renting a dvd is infinitely cheaper than the old standby of dinner but a really magical date can be as simple and cheap as a walk in the park, literally. Think outside the box. Ingenuity ups the surprise factor. Consider doing something neither one of you has ever done before. It doesn't have to be fancy or expensive. It doesn't a waltz and an orchestra to sweep a woman off her feet.

2. Sell yourself. There's a fine line between being yourself and
appearing like you just don't care. Let's just put it this way: if
you're wearing sweatpants to your first date, and that first date
doesn't involve the two of you training for the marathon together, you may have a problem. And I'm very serious when I say this goes for both women and men equally. If she's constantly showing up in a dress and heels and you haven't shaved in three days, consider what that's telling her.

3. Don't give it all away immediately. It is both unadvisable and unnecessary to spill your life story on your first date. Leave your baggage at home and retain some of the mystery. Save some of your best stories for later, dropping details like petals, constantly leaving something new to pique his or her interest.

4. Share the space. Ask questions, be interested, listen. You may be agreat amateur stand-up comedian or expert at the dramatic monologue but your date is not your audience. Communication is all about give and take. This also seems like a good time to remind you to be careful of bragging. We all want to share the parts of our lives that are interesting or exceptional or cool, but be careful of what you're trying to sell. The converse of this is also true. Self-deprecation may seem charming, but it rarely ages well.

5. Change your focus. Little things like making eye-contact can mean a lot. When you make a date, have the date be about you and the person you're with. If that date does include hanging out with other friends, make sure you introduce your date, make sure your date is included in conversations.

6. Never underestimate the power of a romantic gesture. Though it may seem silly, things like flowers and love letters still mean something. This is not about spending money on gifts or showering people with expensive trinkets. Again, this is about being person, being intimate,and it doesn't have to cost a thing.

With Compliments

Cheryl

(For more information or to purchase a copy of "The Commitment
Chronicles," please visit www.commitmentchronicles.com)